Historical Context and Overview - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 3

available. Multivolume works could easily be written on several of our
topics. Consequently, our aims of brevity and comprehensiveness are
necessarily often in conflict. Each chapter cites reliable secondary
sources, when available, to which the interested reader is referred for ad-
ditional material.
Our reliance on verifiable primary sources has another consequence:
we cannot treat in any detail events in the very recent past for which
documentation is not yet available. For instance, the failed attempt to ne-
gotiate a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC), the extensive reorganization of the US government following the
2001 terrorist attacks, and the nature of current US biodefense programs
are all topics for which much of the primary-source documentation re-
mains classified. Until these documents are declassified, these important
topics will not be amenable to rigorous historical treatment and must re-
ceive only passing comment here.
Biological Weapons before 1945
The history of biological weapons before 1945 has been addressed in sev-
eral monographs. Most important are The Problem of Chemical and Bio-
logical Warfare, produced in six volumes by the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which covers the period until approxi-
mately 1970; and Biological and Toxin Weapons Research, Development and
Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, edited by Erhard Geissler and John Ellis
van Courtland Moon. 1 Our volume is conceived as a sequel to the latter,
but it owes much to the earlier SIPRI series as well.
Geissler and Moon's volume covers BW from the Middle Ages to World
War I, BW use in World War I, BW programs from the 1920s to 1945 in a
number of individual states, and BW use in World War II. The resulting
picture shows that after the “Golden Age” of bacteriology at the end of
the nineteenth century, when scientists first unraveled the causes of in-
fectious diseases, the military applications of this knowledge intrigued
several countries, some of which initiated offensive programs. These be-
gan with efforts by Germany in World War I (and by France on a much
more limited scale) to attack military draft animals covertly with the dis-
eases anthrax and glanders. Following the war, there was widespread
speculation in the press and in military circles that the next major conflict